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Love wasn't for people like them.
Love was for people who didn't have to worry about the survival of 98 other people.
Love was for people who were still happy and hopeful. Love was for people who were whole.
Not broken, bloody, and battered people.
*
Clarke was sure she would never love anyone again.
After Wells died, she became more attached to Finn. Mostly because she needed someone to lean on, even if was just for a moment.
But, of course, everything went to hell with Finn.
Which wasn't even fair, because life was suppose to get easier on earth, not harder.
Loving Finn was suppose to make life happier, not make it sadder. Love was suppose to fill you with joy, not with dread and guilt.
*
Bellamy never wanted to love anyone else but Octavia.
Love made him do stupid things. Like try to assassinate the chancellor of the Ark, just to get to earth, just to try and protect the one person in the world he loved. But to be perfectly honest, Bellamy didn't have much lose then.
Loving someone meant protecting them from anything that could harm them. It meant putting them first, no matter what.
And it was hard, it was so hard.
It was hard because none of the 100 understood the feeling of having to protect a sibling. It was hard because even Octavia didn't understand it, not really. It was hard because sometimes Bellamy didn't understand it.
But Bellamy only knew one way to love. And he wouldn't change his ways even if he could.
*
He snuck up on her.
Clarke didn't even realize that he had become more to her until it was almost too late.
He had an arrow in his side, and Clarke thought for a terrible second that this would be the end.
Until he groaned that she better hurry up or he might die just to spite her.
Laughter bubbled up her throat before she set herself to work on getting the arrow out.
She didn't mean to let Bellamy into her heart, she didn't. But somehow he wormed his way in. And she wasn't about to kick him out. Not when she knew she needed him.
*
He realizes that he might be in love with Clarke when he is holding down a screaming boy as she pulls the multiple arrows out of his body.
He watched as she didn't flinch with each of the blood curdling screams the boy let loose.
She had come a long way since Jasper's stabbing when they first landed. She didn't flinch, she didn't let the blood bother her, she just told Bellamy to hold the boy tighter. And he obeyed.
He doesn't mean to obey her without question.
If someone had told him when the first landed that he would obey the Princess without question, he would have laughed and called them a fool. But now he knew better. He knew that despite how well the others follow him, he knows that they wouldn't have survived those first weeks without Clarke.
*
She needs him.
She needs his passion and his anger. She needs his emotions and his ability to lead.
The 100 would have never followed just her. At first, she just needed him to help lead. But now she needed him to help her make decisions. She needed him to help carry this huge weight that is being responsible for all these kids.
She needed him to, sometimes, remind her that she was barely older than a kid herself.
She needed his ability to make her laugh, especially late at night when the others had gone to bed, and she and Bellamy are still up talking about the day and the plans for the next.
She needed his smile on the days that were good. She needs it on the days that are not. But she can't say that yet.
*
He has never said it, but he needs her too.
He needed her level head and her ability to push aside her emotions for the greater good.
He needed her ability to understand Octavia in a way that he couldn't. He needed her ability to take care of the others. He needed her healing because he is sure all of them would be dead by now without her.
He needed her to remind him that he doesn't have to be the monster. That it wasn't his job to take all the darkness and put it on himself.
He needed her forgiveness for his past sins, he needed her compassion.
He needed her smile and the way her hair glowed in the early morning light.
And he needed her hand in his when things got hard. He needed her hand in his when things were going right too, but he wasn't going to tell her that.
*
She wishes she could tell him the truth.
The words are always on the tip of her tongue, but each time she thinks they are about to slip out, they don't.
Instead she says something about guard shifts or medical supplies.
Once, late one night, after a couple of cups of moonshine, she tells him that she needs him.
He laughed and said, 'I always knew that, Princess.'
She smiled at him before she fell asleep on his shoulder.
*
He thinks the words quite often. But he doesn't think he could say them.
He needs her so much, he can't stand the thought of losing her. And telling her he loved her, might make her leave. Or pull back some how.
So he teases her, he argues with her. He keeps her away from Spacewalker because she deserves so much better than Finn.
She deserves better than Bellamy but he doesn't want to think about that.
He tells her once that she deserves more than she gets. She just smiled sadly and said 'doesn't everyone?'
He could argue with her, tell her she deserves more than other people. But he knows she would never see that. So he just smiled sadly back at her.
*
Clarke doesn't think he should carry the guilt from his mother death.
It weighs him down, makes him seem older, sadder. She doesn't like it.
She just wants to take all the pain away. But she knows that won't make it better. But she thinks if she could make him happy, even just for a little while, it could get easier for him.
She wishes he could see himself the way she sees him. She wishes that he could look at himself from her eyes.
Clarke knows wishes never come true, but she can still hope.
*
Bellamy thinks she shouldn't have to be everyone's rock. She shouldn't have to be that strong. No human is.
She shouldn't take on everyone's problems as if they were her own.
He knows she does it out of guilt from her own mother. She feels guilty that her mother caused so many problems for people on the Ark. She feels like she should fix all the 100 problems, to prove she is better than her mother.
Bellamy already knows she is. He knows that Clarke is the best person he has ever met. She devotes so much time to the 100, she lets them act as if she was their mother.
He wishes he could make life easier for her. But, to be honest, he isn't sure how.
*
She likes his small touches.
On days that are cold, and she has to patrol the camp with him, he always wraps his arms around her.
He says it's because she is always so cold and he has enough warmth for both of them. And Clarke never questions it because he is warm, and she does love the feeling of his arms around her.
When he comes up behind her, he always places a hand on the small of her back, just to let her know he is there.
He slips his hand through hers when she feels like falling apart. She never knows how he knows that she needed him, but somehow he just does
She would've never put Bellamy as a touchy person. But now that she thinks about it, it totally fits him.
*
He likes the fact that she trusts him.
Clarke doesn't trust easily, or at all. But the fact that she trust him to know the reasoning behind her decisions is enough to make his heart skip a beat.
She trusts him enough for her to tell him the truth about what happened with Finn.
She lets him see her cry, even more, she lets him comfort her.
He loves it, loves seeing her relax when he is nearby.
It makes him feel like, maybe, one day, she could love him.
*
They slowly learn each other's feelings. Never through actually telling each other. But through small things.
The smiles, the looks, the touches.
Eventually, he starts to sleep in her tent. He always claimed it was because it got so cold at night, and Clarke had never liked the cold.
Clarke starts to seek out his small touches. She pulls his hand into hers when they go out in the forest. She leans her head against his shoulder when the sit together by the fire.
Bellamy starts talking about his life on the Ark with her. He tells her about his mother and the stories she used to tell him and Octavia before they went to bed. He tells Clarke that his mother taught him about the Greeks and Romans, and how she always had these old history books that he read everyday.
They talk about the people they used to know on the Ark. They try to see if they knew any of the same people. They don't, but it makes them laugh to remember their old lives.
Clarke talks about her father. How he loved watching old sports and talking about the stars and space. She tells him that Clarke's mother started teaching her first aide and medical things when she was ten. She tells him about Wells, and how he would always steal extra paper for her.
They laugh until they cry because despite only talking about the good memories, the bad ones always surface.
Clarke thinks that she will love Bellamy forever.
Bellamy knows he will love her forever.
*
They never really acknowledge the change. They never make an announcement about it. They just continue living.
Bellamy moves into Clarke's tent fully. He still argues with her but sometimes, when he gets tired of arguing, he just kisses her instead of walking away.
Clarke touches him more, she reaches for his hand when ever they stand together, she leans into his chest when he sits behind her.
He plays with her hair when he gets bored when they sit by the fire. She smacks his hand when he creates tangles that will take ages to get out.
He still calls her princes but it has become much more of a pet name than an insult. She still pretends that she hates it.
*
Maybe love wasn't for people like them.
Maybe they were too broken to love anyone else.
Maybe the reason they loved each was because they were broken.
They didn't really care.
*
"Hey Bellamy?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you."
"That I knew, Princess."
She rolled her eyes at him and smiled.
He grabbed her hands and pulled her into his chest.
"I love you too, Clarke."